There was a large clan of Batemans in the area, including branches in Hawkshead, Cartmel, and Windermere, and several Miles Batemans, so it is difficult to disentangle one from another. There seem to be at least two Miles Batemans in Underbarrow in the second half of the seventeenth century (and one at Crook, who mentions his namesake with respect). It has been suggested that they were father and son (who may not even have been born at the time of Fox's visit in 1652),¹ but this is uncertain. In 1668 one of them is called ‘Miles Bateman the Elder’. One of them at least lived in Tullythwaite Hall, which was bought by an earlier Miles Bateman on 15 July 1578. In 1635, another Miles Bateman, of Tranthwaite, gentleman, entered into an agreement with Miles Bateman of Tullithwaite, shearman, over the Tranthwaite estate (at the north of the village) which appears to have been being held in trust for the first Miles’ underage son, Randall. By 1641, he is beng described as ‘Miles Bateman of Tullithwaite, co. Westmorland, gentleman’. He may be a candidate for ‘Miles Bateman the Elder’.

It seems that both men became Friends. Miles Bateman was among the first Friends (together with James Lancaster and Miles Halhead) to make a short visit to Ireland in the spring of 1654: in his account of this, Halhead calls him ‘old Myels Bateman of Underbarrow’. He also travelled south in England, calling people to repentance in Stafford in 1655, as a result of which he was ‘whipped, & put into the town Prison, where he fasted several days & eat not anything’ [First Publishers of Truth 229]. He visited Cornwall in 1656, while Fox was imprisoned in Launceston Castle, though Fox himself dates to 1657 the visit of ‘litle Miles Bateman’ (does this refer to his age or his stature?), with Miles Halhead and Miles Hubersty, to ‘ye South & to Bristoll and Into ye West to preach ye gospell {which Bateman turned Apostate}’ [Fox Journal 2 337].

In 1658, one of the Miles Batemans was still ‘esteemed a good ffriend, and did walke in the feare of god in humillitye’, but then, having gone to London, he let ‘his mind run after noveltyes, the soules enimy prevailed over him more and more till att Length he quite Revoulted from truth, made shipwrack of faith and good conscience, became Insolent and Arrogant in minde, and when he came home pulled downe one side of the [Friends’] burrying-place wall againe and layed it to his field to be plowed as formerly ... by which he did magnifie himselfe in wickednesse and became highly esteemed among unbelievers’ [see ‘Other Texts’]. The cause of this is said to have been that he was ‘but young in years’. The timing of this episode is also uncertain; the account does not seem to have been written until 1680. Other Quaker documents suggest that he (or the other Miles Bateman) joined the Story/Wilkinson splinter group (which might qualify him for the term ‘Apostate’); but he then reneged on them and was reconciled. The account of the burial ground affair, however, makes it sound as if that Miles Bateman did not return to the fold, so perhaps here we have two separate scandals with two separate Miles Batemans, one of which was resolved and one of which was not. A Miles Bateman is still being fined for Quaker-related offences until Besse's citations come to an end in 1690. The name appears in the Westmorland Quaker Meeting Burial Registers in 1685 and 1717. IN his probate inventory the 1685 one is described as 'Miles Bateman Senior of Stricklandgate in Kirkby Kendall in the county of Westmorland'; had he retired there? More Bateman wills remain to be examined.

Sources
William C. Braithwaite The Beginnings of Quakerism 2nd edition revised by Henry J. Cadbury (Cambridge University Press, 1961)
George Fox The Journal of George Fox edited Norman Penney, 2 vols (Cambridge University Press, 1911)
‘The First Publishers of Truth’: being early records, now first printed, of the introduction of Quakerism into the counties of England and Wales, edited Norman Penney (Friends Historical Society Journal Supplements 1-5; London: Headley; New York: Taber, 1907)
Donald Rooksby The Quakers in North-West England, Part One: The Man in Leather Breeches (Colwyn Bay: D. A. Rooksby, 1994)

Return to Bateman Index

1.      Unfortunately the Kendal baptismal records are missing from 1631 to 1660. Three children of a Miles Bateman were christened in the adjoining chapelry of Crosthwaite and Lyth, whihc belonged to the parish of Heversham, in the 1640s, Agnes, George, and Margaret, but the only Miles (1646) is the son of Thomas Bateman. A Myles Bateman, son of Myles of Underbarrow, was born in 1665, far too late to be involved, even as a youth, in the burial ground dispute. There was another philoprogenitive Miles Bateman at Crook in the 1620s. To add to the complications, though not surprisingly, Batemans seem to have married Birketts and Hallheads. The Bateman clan clearly needs further work.